Evaluation of noise compression properties ...

Abstract
The growing demand for high bandwidth access services is driving the development of low-cost passive optical network technology, such as spectrum-sliced wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) using incoherent sources. However, the relative intensity noise (RIN) present in incoherent light imposes an upper limit on the achievable system performance. This impacts directly on high channel density spectrum-sliced systems, as the intensity noise increases with decreasing channel bandwidth. A gain-saturated Reflective Semiconductor Optical Amplifier (RSOA) can be used to overcome this limitation and suppress the intensity noise, allowing for increased spectral efficiency. Moreover, this technique has the additional benefit that the RSOA can be used simultaneously for both signal modulation and amplification.
We present an experimental and simulative study on the impact of the RSOA on the RIN of a sliced ASE source, focusing on the noise compression factor of the device. The analysis has been carried out on two RSOA devices with different characteristics using different filters placed before and after the RSOA. In particular, the noise source is generated by a slice of Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifier (EDFA) selected with two filters with different bandwidth (50 GHz and 6 GHz) and transfer function. The introduction of a further optical filter after the RSOA has been studied. Finally, a complete simulative investigation has been carried out in order to confirm the experimental results.